Re: Does eyesight prohibit access to piloting

You gotta have 20-20 vision when you start you pilot career. Your eyes can get worse with age, but they must remain correctable to 20-20 to keep flying.

With the advent of laser eye correction, most anybody can get 20-20 vision. But do NOT go to non-military laser eye facility to get your eyes corrected if you want to be a military pilot. It MUST be done by a military medical facility. Military facilities use a different procedure than the civil facilities and the civil procedure is not rated for high G environments. If you ever get a civil laser eye procedure, you'll never fly in the military. Besides, the military will do it for free.

Re: Does eyesight prohibit access to piloting

You need 20/20 vision to become a pilot... especially a fighter pilot.

If you are interested in vision improvement, you can check out this site:

http://www.improvingmyeyesight.com/rebuild.html

The site offers a program of eye exercises to improve your vision. Actually, the creator of the program, Orlin Sorensen, had a very similar situation like you... he wanted to be a pilot, but didn't have 20/20 vision. You can read his story on the site.

My vision is 20/400, which is really poor. I recently started doing the exercises to try to improve my vision. I created a blog where I record my progress with the exercises.

I recently saw some improvement. Other people (who have also experienced improvements) have posted comments about their experiences as well. You can check it out at: http://improvingmyeyesight.com/blog

Re: Does eyesight prohibit access to piloting

eyesight is important on piloting...as you need it especially when you became a fighter pilot...your eyes should be fast or else enemies will come to you without you knowing it before hand and you can't get ready...

Re: Does eyesight prohibit access to piloting

So if someone wanted to be a search and rescue helicopter pilot for the air force, they couldn't wear contacts? someone told me that you could have 20/40 vision with any correction (Without wearing contacts,lasik?) but it needs to be correctable to 20/20. I mean I'm going to be going into highschool soon, and i had an herpes simplex virus in my right eye i got it when i was three. and ever since i've been going to a hospital in iowa city, and with a contact my eyes are 20/30 or 20/35. If my eyesight won't allow me to become a miliary sar pilot, should i pursue a different career? Or should this not affect anything?